


Waterloo (Knowing My Fate Is To Be With You)

by millepertuis



Category: Sharp Objects (TV)
Genre: Blanket Warning for Canon, Camille Had a Good Day Once Maybe But Not In This Fic, Cool Motive; Still Murder, Crueltide, F/F, Post-Season/Series 01, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 13:24:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17002485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/millepertuis/pseuds/millepertuis
Summary: It’s late afternoon. Amma killed someone. Amma killed little girls.





	Waterloo (Knowing My Fate Is To Be With You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [derogatory](https://archiveofourown.org/users/derogatory/gifts).



> title from ABBA's _Waterloo_
> 
> have a happy reading and a happy yuletide!

 

Camille cooks more, now.

It’s different, having someone to take care of. Camille buys fresh fruit and keeps a well-stocked fridge. She digs up the recipes Gayla gave her when Camille moved out. She watches cooking videos on Youtube.

Amma always stays with her in the kitchen when she cooks. She helps, following Camille’s instructions scrupulously, or she just sits on the counter and asks her about her day, keeps her company.

Faint footsteps stalking into the kitchen behind her; hands gripping Camille’s waist as Amma hooks her head over Camille’s shoulder to peer into the pan. She hums happily.

“Smells good,” she says.

She stays there as Camille keeps stirring the sauce. Camille is too hot; it’s the middle of the summer, and there’s heat coming off the stove, and heat coming off Amma, but Camille doesn’t dislodge her.

This, Camille thinks, almost scared to put a name to it lest it be taken away, is happiness. It blooms inside Camille and aches like an atrophied muscle.

“Did you like the school?” she asks.

“It’s a school,” Amma says. “It looked fine. I’d rather stay home with you all day.”

Camille brings up a hand and brushes the tips of her fingers against Amma’s cheek. “Well,” she says, smiling, “I’m going back to working full time in the fall, so you’ll have to go to school.”

Amma makes a grumpy noise and buries her nose into the crook of Camille’s neck. “Yeah, yeah, I’ll be a good girl,” she mumbles into Camille’s neck, her lips brushing against Camille’s skin with every word—

_What am I going to do with the teeth?_

The cold porcelain of the bathroom sink digging into her palm. Camille’s throat is burning. “Shh,” Amma is saying as she rubs her back. “It’s all right, get it all out, you’ll feel better afterwards.” It’s late afternoon. Amma killed someone. Amma killed little girls.

Camille throws up again.

After, Amma wipes her mouth gently. She cups Camille’s face in her hands, and swipes her thumbs under Camille’s eyes to dry her tears. “It’s gonna be alright, you’ll see,” she says, smiling warmly at Camille. “Don’t we get along well together?”

Camille can’t speak. Camille can’t do anything. She can only hang on as Amma half-carries her to her room, as Amma helps her into the bed, as Amma takes off her shoes and socks. She shudders as Amma unbuttons her jeans, but she lets her tug them off her legs and bare scarred skin. Amma doesn’t look. She draws the covers over Camille and then goes back to the bathroom, humming a little tune to herself. Camille hears the water running, Amma washing off the sink.

Amma comes back to bed with a water bottle. “You have to rehydrate,” she tells Camille. She pulls Camille up a little and tilts her head back to make her drink, ignoring Camille’s feeble attempts at pushing Amma away. “There,” she says, laying Camille down again. She starts stroking Camille’s hair, looking down at her with a pleased half-smile on her lips.

Camille had liked taking care of Amma after the trial, too. Adora’s blood in their veins like cancer.

What would Marian have grown into?

Amma makes to get up and Camille reaches for her without thinking. She catches Amma’s wrist with nerveless fingers. “Don’t go,” she says. Amma can’t go. Amma has to stay with her.

Amma killed little girls.

“I won’t,” Amma tells her, and she lets Camille draw her into the bed as she has drawn Camille into hers so many times since they came to St Louis. Camille was always glad to go. She was glad to hold onto Amma throughout the night, counting her breaths to ward off nightmares and her darkest compulsions. She was glad Amma held onto her.

How can she sleep now?

Amma moves closer in the middle of the night.

“’m cold,” she mumbles, half-asleep. Camille doesn’t go to turn off the AC. She lets Amma burrow into her and snake a hand under Camille’s shirt, her palm warm against Camille’s skin.

There is a shape in the corner of the room. It looks like Natalie Keene. It looks like Ann Nash.

They smile at her, mouth bloody and toothless.

Camille rests her hand over Amma’s ribs, and counts her breaths.

She drifts off.

 

 

 

In the morning, everything feels clearer. Camille wishes it didn’t.

“Did you kill her?” she asks.

“Who?”

Camille closes her eyes. “Mae.”

“I haven’t done anything to Mae. Nothing _really_ bad anyway. I’m not stupid.”

“Amma,” Camille says urgently, “did you hurt her?”

“No,” Amma says, drawing out the vowel with exasperation. “I’ve been pushing her around a little, but I only just got you, it’s hardly the time for bodies to start dropping around me again.”

Okay. Okay. Camille takes a shaky breath. Don’t let her see you cry, she tells herself as she told herself so often during the trial, half-protective impulse, even now, half—can’t she admit it now?—half-fear. She’s afraid of Amma.

“What do you want, Amma?” she’d asked a little after the trial. Amma had yanked her closer and planted a kiss to her cheek. “Nothing, now I have you. I just want to stay with you forever.”

Camille had looked down and smiled, incandescently happy. “You’ll change your tune the first time I ground you,” she had joked.

“Never,” Amma had said. “You’ll never get away from me.”

“What do you want, Amma?” Camille asks now, thinking, _I have to give her up_ ; thinking, _I can’t give her up_.

What would prison do to a girl like Amma? What would Amma do in a place like prison?

She turns onto her side on the bed to look at Amma beside her.

Amma hesitates. “I just want to stay with you,” she says.

“Promise me you won’t hurt anybody else.”

Amma stares at her, a glint in her eyes that Camille doesn’t want to interpret.

Will she promise? Can Camille believe her if she does?

“You won’t tell Mama?”

“I won’t. Do you promise?”

“And you’ll keep me.”

“I’ll always keep you. Amma, do you promise?”

Amma takes her time to answer, her eyes darting all over Camille’s face.

“I promise,” she says at last.

Camille closes her eyes again and breathes.

 

 

 

“It’s not safe here,” Marian told her in their mother’s house, Amma’s hand a burning brand against Camille’s back. You’re not safe here. Camille wasn’t. She almost died in that house, in the house that ate Marian alive.

Is Camille safe now?

 

 

 

Later, she calls Mae’s mother.

Later, she calls Frank.

“Amma’s not doing so well,” she says. “She needs me,” she says.

Later, Amma says, “Don’t be angry with me.”

Camille isn’t angry. Camille needs a fucking drink.

“Why did you kill them?” Camille asks.

Part of her still thinks if she could only find the right question she would—unlock something, find some way that Amma can be forgiven after all.

The rest of her knows better.

Amma kept the teeth. Amma kept trophies.

Amma shrugs, looking mulish. “I don’t know. It was something to do.”

“You killed people because it was something to do?”

Amma shrugs again. She liked explaining how she did it, half-bragging, but she doesn’t like being asked why.

“You didn’t just wake up one day and told your girl friends you should murder someone, Amma.”

“Kinda. We read Lord of the Flies in class, you know? Pretty sick stuff, right? It got me curious about how far I could make them go.” She grins at Camille. “I got them started on small stuff. Shoplifting, pranks, that sort of things. We’d already been doing some bullying, I got them to kick it up a bit. Then we started setting up for Calhoun Day.” She made a face. “I hate that play. It pissed me off, thinking about everyone in this town celebrating a woman who didn’t do anything except endure rape and captivity. Like that’s the only thing girls can do. So I said all kind of stuff about how we wouldn’t have lied there and just taken it, how we’d have killed those bastards, how girls could do anything boys did and better—you know, all the girl power stuff. They followed right along. We were pretty bored, you know,” Amma adds reflectively.

God. God.

“Then I just had to pick who.”

“Why them?” Camille asks when she finds her voice again.

“They were convenient.”

Adora had taken an interest in Ann and Natalie, not long before they were murdered. It was partly why she had made such a good suspect. The timing was just—convenient.

“Kelsey wanted to do her ex-boyfriend next. And I had my eye on the drama teacher. I thought we could work up to it, you know.”

“And now?” Camille asks as evenly as she can. “Do you have your eye on someone now?”

Amma reaches out a hand, yanks playfully at a strand of Camille’s hair. “No,” she says with a half-smile. “I’m not so bored anymore.”

 

 

 

Amma flips the channels until Camille stops her on a Roger Rabbit rerun.

“He wanted to fuck her, you know?” Amma says at some point.

“Who?”

“John. He wanted to fuck his sister. Everyone could tell.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s not true.”

Amma shrugs a little, and looks back at the screen.

“I’m just drawn that way,” she mouths along as Jessica Rabbit delivers the line.

 

 

 

The dollhouse is gone when Camille comes home.

The bag of groceries slips from Camille’s fingers.

“Amma?” she calls, but Amma doesn’t answer. Amma isn’t in Camille’s room. She isn’t painting her nails on the couch, she isn’t in the kitchen, isn’t in the shower, isn’t in her own room.

Camille holds her head in her hands. She’s going to throw up. Her mind is spinning.

She’s gone, she’s gone, she _left me_ —

“Hey.”

Amma is standing at the doorway, watching Camille. Camille stares back at her.

“Where have you been?” she asks.

“Out.”

“Did you hurt someone?”

“Oh my god. You’re acting like I go on a killing spree every weekend. I’ve only killed twice, you know.”

Camille is going to cry. Camille is going to shatter right there on the floor. Something is breaking open inside her.

She still loves Amma. She still needs Amma.

“Where’s the dollhouse?” she asks.

“I got rid of it. It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? I don’t mind giving it up for you. I don’t need it that much. I just get bored, that’s all.”

You don’t murder people because you get bored.

 

 

 

Camille had wanted Richard to save her, and he hadn’t, not really. He took one look at the dark mess Camille hid under her clothes and beneath her skin and he was horrified by it. Frank saved her. Frank came for her.

Frank can’t do anything for her now.

 

 

 

“I liked it,” Amma says. “Your article.  _I’ve been leaning toward kindness_. I liked that.”

They’re at the store, looking for curtains to put up in Amma’s new room. Amma is wandering around, running her hand over the material of every sample.

“Did you?” 

Amma nods.

“I like that you’re kind to me. I want to be kind to you, too. You know,” she says, stopping at Camille’s side and engulfing her into a hug, “I don’t need all this. The curtains, the new furniture, the stuff to hang up on my walls.”

“I want you to feel at home,” Camille tells her.

Amma rubs her face against Camille’s. “I don’t need all that,” she says. “I just need you.”

Camille closes her eyes and—

“What are you doing?” Amma asks sharply.

Camille startles and drops the sewing needle.

She didn’t lock the bathroom door. Why didn’t she lock the bathroom door?

Amma picks up the needle and stares down at it. She swipes her thumb alongside the point, wiping off a drop of blood. Then she puts her thumb in her mouth.

“That’s not hygienic,” Camille tells her.

Amma rolls her eyes. “It’s my blood, too, isn’t it?” She drops the needle in the sink.

She looks Camille over and sighs. “What am I going to do with you?”

“I wasn’t going to do anything,” Camille tries to tell her. She wasn’t going to hurt herself. Not really. She wasn’t going to. It’s barely a prick.

Amma brushes Camille’s hair back with tender fingers. “Aren’t you happy here with me?” she asks in a pleading voice. “Don’t I make you happy?”

She does.

Camille lets herself lean into Amma’s touch.

That’s the terrible thing; she does.

 

 

 

_Coming up for air, coming up for air air—_

Camille’s earbuds are yanked out of her ears. Amma is standing over her. “Don’t,” she tells Camille, biting off the word fiercely. Her knuckles are white where she’s gripping the headphone cables.

“Don’t what?”

Amma bites her lips. Her pupils are dilated. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide away from me.”

“Are you high?”

“It’s what he did. He hid away and he didn’t take me with him.”

Music coming from downstairs as Camille crawled across the floor.

“What did you take, Amma?”

Amma shrugs. Her anger has abated; she lets Camille get her into bed, docilely drinks the water Camille brings her. She leans into the touch when Camille lays her knuckles against her cheek.

“Sometimes, it doesn’t feel real to me.”

“What?”

“Other people. They don’t quite feel real. Like they stop existing once I’m back home with Mama.”

Like dolls who stop moving once Amma puts them down.

“Do I feel real to you?”

Amma shakes her head, a little drowsy. “It’s different with you. Like I dreamed you up.”

“You didn’t dream me up, Amma.”

“Didn’t I? I imagined it so many times.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you ever feel like that?” Amma goes on. “Like you’re the only real person in the world?”

Camille doesn’t feel real at all, most of the time. Like everyone around her is drawn in vibrant colors, but she can only ever be in washed-out shades of gray. She still feels like the girl she had been the day of Marian’s funeral. The taste of bile, the noise of traffic as she had thrown up outside.

She still feels like that girl, the one who had aged a hundred years in a day, like she had taken on the weight of all of Marian’s unspent years all at once. Old bones, old pain; old soul. Camille’s body is still catching up.

Amma is watching her intently.

“You don’t need to make yourself sick if you want me to take care of you,” Camille tells her instead.

Amma turns her face away.

“Is that why you do it?” she asks, meaning, _is that why the needle?_ , meaning, _is that why the scars?_

“No. I don’t know.”

“Why, then?”

To stop thinking. To punish herself. To make her body ugly.

That lipstick, the picture-perfect corpse of her sister, perfectly staged.

“I tried to go get help, you know,” Amma is telling her. “I wanted to save you. I really tried.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Dad saw me downstairs.” She curls up on her side, face still hidden away. “I always knew, you see. I knew he wouldn’t help me. So I never asked. I don’t think I could have born it, if I had asked and he’d—”

Amma doesn’t finish the sentence.

“I left you there,” Camille says.

“No, don't do that,” Amma says, reproachful. She turns around and sits up. “I don’t want you to do that.” She tucks Camille's hair behind her ears and lets her hands linger on Camille's face. It makes something in Camille ache, that tenderness. These hands that are giving her comfort are capable of pain, of cruelty.

Not these hands, something in Camille warns. _Her_.

“Don't put this on yourself. It's quite the bad habit with you, isn't it? Camille, sweet Camille.”

“I’m not sweet.”

“You are.” Amma smiles, nudges her face against Camille’s. “So sweet I could eat you up.”

Her lips brush over Camille’s.

“What are you doing, Amma?”

Amma doesn’t answer.

 

 

 

She left Amma there, in the house of a monster, with for only defense a man so weak he would have let Adora murder all three of her daughters.

He did let her.

What's left of us now?

 

 

 

Camille googles ways to manage aggression until three in the morning. She’s looking up boxing classes in the area when it hits her that she’s trying to get her teenage sister to purge her killing urges through sports.

She puts down her phone and goes to get some liquor.

She pours herself a drink and downs it fast. Then she pours herself another one.

What can she do? They can’t live like this. Day to day—Watching Amma always, scared to sleep, scared to _blink_ —

She can’t keep Amma locked in the house. She can’t keep watch on her every minute of every day. She can’t lie awake every night startling at every creak of the house. If Amma wants to hurt someone, eventually, she will.

What would happen if Camille took—took the teeth and went to the police? Would Amma confess? Would Adora lie for her and keep taking the fall?

The girls’ families—they deserve justice. Yet haven’t they had it already? Doesn’t Adora bear the most guilt in the end? Can’t that be enough?

Amma said she had been bored. She said she had wanted to see how far she could make her friends go. It’s probably true, too. But that’s why she did it, not why she had wanted to. Perhaps her introspection goes no further, but Camille can’t stop going over all of it in her head. Growing up alone in that house, trapped and stifled, poison dripping down her throat, dripping down her ears. Victim of a mother she never let herself hate. Where did all the rage go?

Camille let it out on her own body, over and over. Marian had used to go into black fits of rage as a child—though less and less as she grew older. All of it became muted, her angers and her joys. She had been dying for a very long time before she died.

Where had Amma’s rage gone? In a thousand small cruelties over the years? Was that forest littered with the dead bodies of small animals Amma might have spent her anger on?

And then, of course, Ann and Natalie.

What about the justice _they_ deserve?

Camille’s hands shake as she pours herself a third drink.

Amma is a child, and Amma is a killer, and Amma is Camille’s little sister.

What would Camille have turned into, without Marian? Sweet, beloved Marian, who shouldered all of their mother’s love and drank all of her poison. Marian who taught Camille what love was supposed to feel like.

Who had been there to teach Amma?

I am now, Camille tells herself. She feels strangely calm.

How many ghosts does Camille carry around with her? How many dead little girls? She had tried so hard to hold onto Marian, onto Alice. Now she can’t let go.

She doesn’t want Amma to add to them.

Marian’s hand settles on Camille’s as she goes to finish her drink.

Camille shuts her eyes tightly for a long while. When she opens them again, Marian is gone and Amma is at the kitchen door, watching her.

“Come back to bed,” she tells Camille.

Camille does.

 

 

 

“I’d make up stories about you,” Amma tells her as Camille works the conditioner into the ends of her hair. “About where you were, what you were doing. I read all your articles and imagined they were stories you were telling only me. Sometimes, I imagined you’d come back and take me away.”

I’m sorry, Camille thinks. I’m so sorry.

“I was a little careless with you, wasn't I? It's only, I wanted you to see me so badly, you know? I wanted you to know me, really know me, and love me. They were all so stupid, back home,” Amma says, sweeping her arms to make small waves in the bath water. “It’s what I told Jodes and Kelsey. It’s never ever going to even cross their minds that a girl could do it. And it didn’t. Only you,” Amma says, tilting her head back to look at Camille with glowing eyes. She touches the tips of her wet fingers to Camille’s cheek. She smiles. “I was so happy you found the second body. Why does it matter why I thought I was doing it then? It was all for you.”

 “Don’t—”

“ _I_ brought you home. Don’t you see? You came home for me, even if you didn’t know it. You came and you took me back with you, just like I had always wanted.”

Camille holds back a sob. She takes Amma’s hand in hers. Does she want to stop Amma from touching her, or does she want to hold Amma’s hand? She doesn’t know.

 _Like you’re my soulmate_ , Amma told her once. Part of Camille wanted to believe it. Believe that there was something, someone she was meant for. Even though she felt so uneasy, always felt so uneasy around Amma—sick with fear and guilt and love—even then she wanted to believe it.

“We were meant for each other,” Amma says, half-plea, half-threat, and Camille cries and cries and fears her and loves her still.

 

 

 

Amma kneels down between Camille’s legs and slips the razor blade out of Camille’s slack fingers.

Marian flickers in and out of Camille’s vision, watching her over Amma’s shoulder.

“I don’t want you to see,” Camille whispers.

“It’s alright,” Amma says. She leans down and licks off the blood that ran down to Camille’s knee. “Let me see them.” She puts the blade down on the bed and traces the scars on Camile’s legs gently, so gently. She looks at each one, reading them, mouthing the words to herself.

Can you take them? Camille thinks. Can I give them to you?

Amma pulls Camille’s shirt up and then off. She trails her fingers over the scars she finds there, then her mouth.

Camille closes her eyes and lets her.

Eventually, Amma takes up the blade again. Camille lets her do that, too.

 

 

 

The white-hot pain of the razor blade. The heat of Amma’s palm on her hip, holding her still, holding her down; anchoring her.

The part of Camille that strives to be good loves Amma; the darker, most destructive part of Camille loves her, too.

 

 

 

Amma isn’t in bed. Amma is on the kitchen floor. The cupboard Camille keeps her stash in is cracked open. There is blood on Amma's shirt.

Blood on Alice’s hands.

Except Alice hadn’t been the one to slit her wrists, had she?

Amma opens her eyes when Camille kneels down and takes her hand. “I can always smell it on you, when you drink,” Amma tells her. “I don’t think it’s fair that you don’t share. You never let me have any fun.”

She falls quiet as Camille pushes back her sleeve, as Camille stares down at her arm.

Fresh cut and old scar tissue in a crescent shape.

 _I could make a C for Camille_ , she remembers Amma telling her once.

“I love you, you know,” Amma says.

“What does that mean?” Camille asks, on the verge of tears. “What does that mean to you?”

“It means I’m happy when I’m with you. It means I want you. I’d do anything to keep you with me.”

“Don’t—don’t say things like that.”

“Why? It’s true. I don’t need anybody but you. You’re just like me. When you came home, I thought maybe you would—see me. Love me. You’re all wrong, too. But you think I’m awful, don’t you? You think I’m a monster. You don’t want me. Or you want me like Mama wanted me, small and quiet and _weak_.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re just like her,” Amma says with angry tears. “You want me to be weak, to be helpless.”

“No, Amma—”

“You do! You want to keep me trapped here with you!”

Camille’s words get stuck in her throat.

“What do you think is going to happen?” Amma asks. “Do you think if you just—” the word struggles out of her mouth—“ _love_ me enough, I’ll become a good little girl? Do you think you can save me? Well, you’re fifteen years too late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why did you leave me?” Amma asks. “Why didn’t you come back for me?”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Camille apologizes blindly, pressing her face to Amma’s, pressing her tears to Amma’s.

“I hate you. I hate you!” Amma repeats, shouting. “I hate her. You left me there. How could you leave me there?” She breaks down crying, calling, “Mama, Mama…”

 

 

 

“You’ve made me so happy.” Amma watches Camille from her side of the bed. She skims her hand over Camille's cheek, over the drying tears under Camille's eyes. “It’s what it’s supposed to be like. Family. It’s what I should have had. But it’s too late now. I ruined it. I’m not good to you. I hurt you.”

“Stop hurting me, then.”

“You should have given me up. You _should_ give me up. Maybe then they’ll put me with Mama.”

No, Camille thinks. She takes Amma’s hand and says it out loud: “No.”

“I know what I am,” Amma says. “I know I’m all wrong. You’re going to leave me, and I’ll be all alone.”

“I won’t leave you.”

“Why not? What are you staying for? You hate me.”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I scare you.”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t give up on me,” Amma begs, squeezing Camille’s hand tightly. “Don’t leave me alone. I don’t like how I get when I’m all alone.”

“I won’t,” Camille promises. She let Amma kiss her. She let Amma touch all her scars. If she could cut herself open and dig deep enough, she would find Amma’s fingerprints on the inside of her veins, along her heart ventricles.

She can’t get her out. Most of her doesn’t want to.

She draws her arms around Amma, her heart beating wildly. “I won’t, I won’t. We’ll go through it all together.”

 

 

 

The two of you are still trapped in that house, even after Adora is gone.

She has barred the doors.

There is no way out.

 

 

 

“Come on,” Camille says, pushing the second earbud into Amma’s ear. “Listen with me.”

She presses play.

_And if I say to you tomorrow—_

 


End file.
